Negative Space

by Zoë Strachan

A fierce and vivid story of grief and the search for identity, from a brilliant young female voice. Dying at twenty four is unnatural. But that's what Simon did, leaving his sister in shock, alone and haunted by the past. In the harsh but strangely comforting anonymity of Glasgow, she moves dazedly from artists' studios to smoky pubs, clutching at comfort wherever she can find it, in drink or sex. Her already fractured world seems now to have been torn apart, as she struggles with the question of whether secrets are better exposed or buried. But an unexpected trip to Orkney at last offers a change in her tense and frightening world. NEGATIVE SPACE is a harshly honest yet beautiful novel, and one of the most powerful debuts of recent times.

Genres: Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Zoë Strachan was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, in 1975. She is the author of three novels: Ever Fallen in Love, Spin Cycle and Negative Space.

Ever Fallen in Love was shortlisted for the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards and the Green Carnation Prize and nominated for the London Book Awards. Negative Space won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book of the Year Award.

In 2003 The Independent on Sunday listed her in their top twenty novelists under 30, and the Scottish Review of Books selected her as one of their new generation of five young Scottish authors in 2011. Her short stories and essays have been included in numerous journals and anthologies, she contributes journalism to various newspapers and magazines and her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3. She has been UNESCO City of Literature writer-in-residence at the National Museum of Scotland, a Hermann Kesten Stipendiaten, a Hawthornden Fellow, a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellow and in 2011 she undertook a British Council visiting fellowship at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa.

Recent works for theatre are Panic Patterns (with Louise Welsh, Citizen's Theatre and BBC Radio Scotland) and Old Girls (which opened the 2009/10 season of A Play, a Pie and a Pint at Oran Mor in Glasgow). Her short opera Sublimation (with composer Nick Fells) toured Scotland in May 2010 with Scottish Opera before going to Cape Town, South Africa in November 2010. The Lady from the Sea, a full-length opera composed by Craig Armstrong and based on the play by Ibsen, premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2012.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 - the pacing was very, very off for me.

[Natalia Pì · Rating 2 out of 5]

I agree with another review i read here on goodreads - this was hard work.
in a way it's really haunting, because it describes how grief-stricken people feel so accurately. anyone who's lost somebody they love will see themselves in these pages, at some stage - so that is the very good thing about this book. i think i would have liked it a lot more if it had been shorter, the part set in Glasgow especially could have been more brief.

[heartful · Rating 4 out of 5]

Electric, a thrilling debut.

[jenny d · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is SO GOOD it kills me. picked it up in scotland a few years ago and have re-read it many, many times since. one of the best books written by someone of my generation...

[Ian Fiddes · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10. Disappointing. Found this one hard work. Not much to recommend here.

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow and didn't seem to have any real point.